For about ten days this autumn, it was sunny and there was a break. During that time, thousands of hectares of grain would be harvested. The rest of the time it has been mixed with showers and persistent rain.
The fields are so waterlogged that the combine harvesters stall when there is a break.
Wet and difficult to drive
The problems are the same in the whole of Västerbotten County, a round-up conducted by SVT news shows.
– The fields are wet and difficult to drive and then it is a concern to get hold of someone to thresh when the weather is good and the harvest window is open, says Ida Oderstål who is a dairy farmer in Laxbäcken, Vilhelmina municipality.
Fredrik Lind in Åbyn, Burträsk, with his 420 cultivated hectares of barley, is one of the county’s largest grain growers.
He ran the thresher almost around the clock for a week and a half in September when the weather was dry and managed to bring in a large part of his harvest.
– It has been a very challenging crop growing year, first with very dry weather at the beginning of the summer when it grew poorly. Then there was a lot of rain which made the land wet and soft and it became difficult to harvest, says Fredrik Lind.
Drier weather in sight
But despite the weather setbacks, there are still hopeful tones.
– The farmers here in the county are fantastic at fighting and helping each other to get the harvest in and now the weather reports say that it will be drier weather. I have actually been involved in harvesting well into November, so we are still optimistic that we will manage our harvest this year as well, says Stefan Lindgren in Östra Spöland.